After spending two weeks with the hottest Windows 8 Ultrabook around — the Yoga is flying off Best Buy store shelves — I have no regrets, even though I lost about $350 in the trade and the laptop has some drawbacks that require third-party fixes.

In case youâ€™ve missed the commercials, the Yogaâ€™s patented hinge technology allows the screen to fold back 360 degrees, transforming the device into a tablet. It is an eye-catching and valuable feature.

Most reviews, from Walt Mossberg to Wired, have noted that the Yoga serves well as a laptop, but not so much as a tablet. I agree that the machine’s size is not ideal for a tablet – a 13-inch screen is slightly too big and 3 pounds is a little too heavy. But the Yoga still works for me as a slate, in bed or on the couch.

I wonâ€™t just rehash all of the points noted by other reviewers. Instead, Iâ€™ll use this blog post to share a few tips/hacks/modifications that will, for the most part, fix some of the highlighted drawbacks of the Yoga.

Unlike a standard review, where the product is typically returned to the manufacturer, this is my personal machine, so Iâ€™ve been able to alter it as pleased. (Disclaimer: you assume all responsibility for what happens to your Yoga should you choose to follow any of the tips).

Limited hard drive space

It was annoying to find that only about half of the 128 GB SSD was available out of the box because the rest of the space was taken up by system files and Lenovoâ€™s and Microsoftâ€™s bloatware. In comparison, my MacBook Air with the same size SSD had about 110 GB of free space after a fresh install of Lion.

I was able to free up about 30 GB of space and combine the ridiculous number of HD partitions into one by following a solution from a user on a Lenovo forum. To perform an admin command highlighted in the fix, press the windows logo button and the â€śxâ€ť key and click on â€ścommand prompt (admin).â€ť Before reinstalling Intel Rapid Start (the last step), go into BIOS by powering off and clicking on the button next to the power button and enable Intel Virtual Technology. And you’ll need a 16 GB flash drive, not 8 GB as stated in the instructions.

Lenovo has since released a â€śhotfixâ€ť solution for merging a couple of the partitions and creating a 95-100 GB C drive. I havenâ€™t used the fix since I went with the third-party solution, but you can find Lenovoâ€™s fix here.

Buggy trackpad driver

A major bug in the trackpad driver turns off two-finger scrolls when certain programs are opened. I experienced the bug with Microsoft Word. Following a touchpad hack from Notebookreview.com user â€śdjklmnopâ€ť will fix the problem and make the trackpad more usable overall.

Cramped keyboard

The keys on the right side of the Yoga’s keyboard are smaller than they are on standard-sized keyboards. This is an issue for me with the backspace and right shift keys. A small program called KeyTweak makes this drawback bearable by allowing users to remap keys.

I doubled the size of the backspace key by giving the same function to the key next to it, the home button. That was an easy fix because I never use the home key. Fixing the half-sized shift key took slightly more work. I remapped the up arrow key into a shift function, and assigned the up arrow function to key next to it, the page down button.

The Yoga is stellar on the hardware side â€“ a sleek design, a beautiful and responsive touchscreen and a standout 360-degree hinge technology. The entry-level specs are 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB SSD and a speedy Intel core i5 processor. The laptopâ€™s boot-up time is blazingly fast â€“ under 10 seconds from a cold start.

The Yoga in tent mode.

I can squeeze about 5.5 hours of battery life with the screen at 75 percent brightness, WiFi on and typical word processing and web browsing functions. Other than the smaller keys and trackpad driver issue, the keyboard feels awesome with a leather-like material encompassing it. The Yoga doesn’t have a backlit keyboard, which isn’t a drawback for my needs. The laptop includes HDMI and SD card slots as well as two USB ports, one 2.0 and one 3.0.

Windows 8 is a good operating system – the modern UI is a great replacement for the old start menu – but the bloatware and bugs put a dent in the user experience. A growing number of people are ditching Windows-based PCs for Macs because of usability – the Mac OS just simply doesn’t come with unneeded software and bugs that require some technical expertise to fix.

Once Lenovo releases a permanent fix for the trackpad issue, I would have no reservations about recommending the Yoga to anyone who’s looking to replace an older laptop while eliminating the need for a tablet. But keep in mind, you will not use the Yoga as a tablet that often because of its size. I use it as a tablet about 20 percent of the time, and can technically recover the $350 I lost in the trade off by dumping the iPad 3 that I’ve rarely used over the past two weeks.

But if you’re a heavy tablet user, you may want to keep the tablet and purchase a lower-priced Ultrabook.

I dumped the MacBook Air for the Yoga for four primary reasons:

I felt too trapped in Apple’s ecosystem – I also own an iPhone 5, the aforementioned iPad and an iMac

I was attracted to the Yoga’s unique design

I wanted to own a Windows 8 touchscreen laptop

I wanted more battery life out of a laptop (my nearly two-year-old Air offered less than 3 hours).

If you are in the market for a Yoga, or are considering buying one as a gift, they’re tough to find in stock at the moment. My tip would be to check the Best Buy inventory daily (by clicking on store pick-up), and ordering them as soon as they show availability. Supplies are draining within a day of being listed.

Second generations of the Yoga â€“ an 11-inch model that features the full Windows 8 operating system rather than Windows RT â€“ would probably be my ideal machine. The expected update will likely be one of the top sellers next holiday season.

UPDATE: Lenovo said a new trackpad driver should fix the two-finger scroll crash. You’ll have to uninstall the old driver before installing the new one. If you are redirected to an interim site to download the driver, make sure the file is “0ttp16ww.exe”. I personally haven’t tried the update since I went with the third-party fix.

the thing about criticizing “figuratively” and “literally” is that it isn’t wrong. It’s called hyperbole or exaggeration. Native English speakers get this instictively, that’s why it’s so commonly used.

I traded in the first Yoga as soon as the Geek Squad said the “touch pad is corrupt”, waited 3 weeks for a new one to show up a store across town. 3 days with the new one and the same issue with the touch pad. I am down loading the fix, thank you for the post! Also traded in my MacBook for this PC. I hope I don’t regret the move.

So, a recommendation to buy a computer with “bloated software”, numerous problems that need to be fixed by third parties, and a “ridiculous” number of hardware partitions. This doesn’t pass the common sense test.

Jesus some people are harsh!
Thanks for the useful info; most reviews are just rehashing the same old garbage and it is great to hear there are solutions to the issues everybody has identified.
As if other products dont come out with issues that need fixing (yes Jobbites you know what I am talking about)!
I’m dumping my i7 11″ macbook air too….screen is crap (no ips with colour bleed) and the battery lasts 3 hours if I am lucky.
Good blog mate.

He could have left out the part about trading in the Mac and the article would be even more useful without the comparison. I think he just put it in there to agitate Apple fanbois, if he even ever owned a Mac Air at all

Great post! I was wondering how to get more space on my yoga. Did the guide on that within 20 minutes and 112GB is mine! Overall the computer is wonderful, what I use it for is schoolwork and gaming when not at home.(Plays CSS on medium/high)

2. Reduce the virtual memory allocation. By default it is set to “System managed size” and my pagefile.sys file had grown to 8gb. Go to Control Panel>System>Advanced System Settings>Advanced>Performance Settings>Advanced>Virtual Memory>Change – set it to the recommended 4577 MB and press “Set,” then restart your computer.

Your annoying post fooled me into thinking this aritcle was recent and not so stale and outdated! No one cares that you “upgraded” from a Mac, I think it’s safe to say the author’s choice has been proven by time to be a complete debacle.

Tamara Chuang covers personal technology and local tech news for The Denver Post. She previously spent 10 years doing the same thing for The Orange County Register before taking a hiatus to move here and become a SAHM to a precocious toddler.